Twice the Water?
'Mars meets all the requirements to support life'
(By Jonathan Amos BBC News Online science staff in Denver)
If the water-ice hidden just below the Martian surface were to melt, it would create a planet-wide sea ankle-deep, scientists have said. The latest findings from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft now in orbit around the Red Planet were released here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The spacecraft's instruments have been trained on the Martian soil for nearly a year.
Evidence of recent running water? The data collected has allowed researchers to complete their first global map of where hydrogen (a signature for water) is hidden just below the planet's surface. "It's become increasingly clear that Mars has enough water to support future human exploration," said Bill Friedman, whose Los Alamos National Laboratory runs the neutron spectrometer on Odyssey. "In fact, there's enough to cover the entire planet to a depth of at least five inches [13 cm], and we've only analysed the top few feet of soil."
The map shows that from 55 degrees latitude to the poles, Mars has extensive deposits of soil that are rich in water-ice, bearing an average of 50% water by mass. In other words, one kilogram of soil would yield half a kilo of water if it were baked in an oven by, for example, astronauts who needed drinking water to sustain themselves on the planet.
The Los Alamos instrument detects neutrons generated when cosmic rays slam into the atoms that make up the Martian soil. Different atoms give off neutrons with specific energies. By looking for the signature of hydrogen - a major constituent of water molecules - Odyssey can infer the presence of water-ice near the poles and hydrated minerals in lower latitudes.
These are exciting times for Mars researchers. There are good indications that, on occasions, water still runs across the surface of the planet. The Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which has been in orbit much longer than Odyssey, has detected what look like channels and river valleys. The data all support the current theory that the Martian surface was once wetter and warmer than it is now. Dr Maria Zuber, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the BBC: "People are now starting to think it's possible that Mars might even have had twice as much water initially when it accreted than the Earth did and that's very exciting indeed."
Researchers have yet to explain satisfactorily where all the water went. If much of it now appears to be in sub-surface soils, they need to work out how it got there.
Professor Bruce Jakosky, of the University of Colorado, told the AAAS: "Mars meets all the environment requirements to be able to support life: liquid water, availability of all the elements out of which you would construct life and a source of energy that could be able to support metabolism. "That doesn't prove there's life on Mars but it says it's plausible and not a stupid idea to go and look." The US and European space agencies are preparing to launch landers to the planet later this year.
Commentary:
Just another pipedream by vested scientists? That's a lot of H2O! The evolutionary, wishful-thinking thread runs so true, that we are left scratching our heads at each new discovery. Life on Mars? Perhaps. But if it is found, how will these scientists explain it? For sure they will go lusting after what lies further beneath the surface. Then begins the cataloging of every bit of speculative fiction on that world. These scientists will so salivate over their discoveries they will deposit microbes all over the place. Nothing is so chock full of science as scientist drool.
It will never enter their minds that the water may have come from another planet as is explained in Walt Brown's book In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for the Creation and the Flood. Of course, any micro-organisms showing up in the supposed water will have had to survive a mighty long trip at temperatures near the absolute zero of space. The surface erosion indicative of past flowing water on Mars is pretty minimal compared to the planet's entire surface. If our future astronauts to Mars want drinking water, they had better provision themselves from Terra Firma. It might be a thousand miles to the first water-soaked soil from where they put down on the red planet.
That word, "acretion" back there in the article reveals the main rationale for their research. We are to assume that Mars made itself through laws that set themselves in motion. It is a big thing that grew out of the pinpoint of matter present before the Big Bang (All the water in the ocean couldn't make the ink evolutionists would like to see used to enlarge upon that idea.)
Where in the universe did that idea come from that Mars might have had twice the water on it than the earth did? I imagine from the same reservoir of gray matter that dreamed up links between ape and man, or from the same kind of reasoning that had people back in the 1800s thinking that the frozen mammoths discovered around the Arctic Sea lived inside the earth like moles.
At least Walt Brown's book attempts to systematically describe things in a global way. When are our highly subsidized geologists, paleontologists, anthropologists, and others of that ilk going to present us a comprehensive picture of origins that makes sense, that includes global research detailing the physics and the complexity of design, that explains what we currently see all around us? We swallow the spin from their ooh and ah speculation, but digest nothing much more substantive than the tail of a comet. Those things have so little matter they don't even cast shadows. Hopefully, the analogy ends there. Those comet tails also extend for millions and millions of miles.
Comments are encouraged. Perhaps you are excited about the prospect of life on Mars and my commentary seems crass, almost sacrilegious. Let me know.
If you are young, perhaps you will go to our neighboring world someday (wish I could go, too). If you do, remember to pack plenty of water.
(By Jonathan Amos BBC News Online science staff in Denver)
If the water-ice hidden just below the Martian surface were to melt, it would create a planet-wide sea ankle-deep, scientists have said. The latest findings from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft now in orbit around the Red Planet were released here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The spacecraft's instruments have been trained on the Martian soil for nearly a year.
Evidence of recent running water? The data collected has allowed researchers to complete their first global map of where hydrogen (a signature for water) is hidden just below the planet's surface. "It's become increasingly clear that Mars has enough water to support future human exploration," said Bill Friedman, whose Los Alamos National Laboratory runs the neutron spectrometer on Odyssey. "In fact, there's enough to cover the entire planet to a depth of at least five inches [13 cm], and we've only analysed the top few feet of soil."
The map shows that from 55 degrees latitude to the poles, Mars has extensive deposits of soil that are rich in water-ice, bearing an average of 50% water by mass. In other words, one kilogram of soil would yield half a kilo of water if it were baked in an oven by, for example, astronauts who needed drinking water to sustain themselves on the planet.
The Los Alamos instrument detects neutrons generated when cosmic rays slam into the atoms that make up the Martian soil. Different atoms give off neutrons with specific energies. By looking for the signature of hydrogen - a major constituent of water molecules - Odyssey can infer the presence of water-ice near the poles and hydrated minerals in lower latitudes.
These are exciting times for Mars researchers. There are good indications that, on occasions, water still runs across the surface of the planet. The Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which has been in orbit much longer than Odyssey, has detected what look like channels and river valleys. The data all support the current theory that the Martian surface was once wetter and warmer than it is now. Dr Maria Zuber, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the BBC: "People are now starting to think it's possible that Mars might even have had twice as much water initially when it accreted than the Earth did and that's very exciting indeed."
Researchers have yet to explain satisfactorily where all the water went. If much of it now appears to be in sub-surface soils, they need to work out how it got there.
Professor Bruce Jakosky, of the University of Colorado, told the AAAS: "Mars meets all the environment requirements to be able to support life: liquid water, availability of all the elements out of which you would construct life and a source of energy that could be able to support metabolism. "That doesn't prove there's life on Mars but it says it's plausible and not a stupid idea to go and look." The US and European space agencies are preparing to launch landers to the planet later this year.
Commentary:
Just another pipedream by vested scientists? That's a lot of H2O! The evolutionary, wishful-thinking thread runs so true, that we are left scratching our heads at each new discovery. Life on Mars? Perhaps. But if it is found, how will these scientists explain it? For sure they will go lusting after what lies further beneath the surface. Then begins the cataloging of every bit of speculative fiction on that world. These scientists will so salivate over their discoveries they will deposit microbes all over the place. Nothing is so chock full of science as scientist drool.
It will never enter their minds that the water may have come from another planet as is explained in Walt Brown's book In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for the Creation and the Flood. Of course, any micro-organisms showing up in the supposed water will have had to survive a mighty long trip at temperatures near the absolute zero of space. The surface erosion indicative of past flowing water on Mars is pretty minimal compared to the planet's entire surface. If our future astronauts to Mars want drinking water, they had better provision themselves from Terra Firma. It might be a thousand miles to the first water-soaked soil from where they put down on the red planet.
That word, "acretion" back there in the article reveals the main rationale for their research. We are to assume that Mars made itself through laws that set themselves in motion. It is a big thing that grew out of the pinpoint of matter present before the Big Bang (All the water in the ocean couldn't make the ink evolutionists would like to see used to enlarge upon that idea.)
Where in the universe did that idea come from that Mars might have had twice the water on it than the earth did? I imagine from the same reservoir of gray matter that dreamed up links between ape and man, or from the same kind of reasoning that had people back in the 1800s thinking that the frozen mammoths discovered around the Arctic Sea lived inside the earth like moles.
At least Walt Brown's book attempts to systematically describe things in a global way. When are our highly subsidized geologists, paleontologists, anthropologists, and others of that ilk going to present us a comprehensive picture of origins that makes sense, that includes global research detailing the physics and the complexity of design, that explains what we currently see all around us? We swallow the spin from their ooh and ah speculation, but digest nothing much more substantive than the tail of a comet. Those things have so little matter they don't even cast shadows. Hopefully, the analogy ends there. Those comet tails also extend for millions and millions of miles.
Comments are encouraged. Perhaps you are excited about the prospect of life on Mars and my commentary seems crass, almost sacrilegious. Let me know.
If you are young, perhaps you will go to our neighboring world someday (wish I could go, too). If you do, remember to pack plenty of water.
posted by Don Daniels at
6:29 PM
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